Farewell Uncle Ho 83
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.
Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 83 (Wed., July 12, 1967)
During that morning's activities, I ultimately had to realize that having someone help with the work in our home was a disquieting experience. In times past, many of my mother's friends and some of our relatives had even had to work in domestic settings, cooking the food and cleaning away the waste of those monetarily more fortunate but certainly not superior. And Gerry had grown up in similar circumstances. His one cousin, posing as his mother, had had to clean for other people, to make ends meet. No matter what, this kind of work was degrading, even if the person you work for knows that they couldn't make it without your help, when left to their own devices.
Of course, there was no way for Gerry and me to keep house in Saigon without outside help. Even if there was no language barrier for me, at least, in Cholon and in those shops where French was spoken, military working hours would keep me from shopping for daily necessities, if they were to be found, at all. And, as we'd found out when we'd checked in to the office, the only shopping facility, which Gerry could use without major effort on his part, the Main Exchange in Cholon, was open until 1830 every day, except Sundays, when it closed at 1700.
These hours had been a pain in the ass stateside, but we were talking about difficult conditions here, where we had to be on duty until after the PX and commissary closed. And, according to our First Sergeant, the only transportation to and from the Cholon Exchange, which was actually in the next city vaguely to the southwest, was a bulky Army bus, afloat in a sea of traffic and pedestrians, which made Manhattan at rush hour look insignificant.
Linh had the answer; he was going to take us shopping, so we could see where our food came from, should the French Embassy return on short notice, and he were to return to their employ. This seemed to be the prevalent attitude, hope. There were no grounds for hope in Saigon, but everyone had it. And it was infectious.
***
Linh led us along Lê Loi Boulevard, through Lam-Son Square, past a building, which vaguely resembled the beaux-arts Petit Palais in Paris and onto Hai Bà Trung Street, which ran perpendicular to the street on which we lived and where, as he'd put it, we would experience first the French and then the German shop. He motioned to the so-called French shop. Although the brightly painted, wooden, cut-out script lettering above the concrete awning, 'Alimentations Générales', told everyone that it was a general grocery store, the large letters, worked into the cement façade below the awning, stated KHINH - KY, and the Chinese characters were centered vertically in the space between the two open doors.
Meat products decorated the window on the far left, enclosed in a glass refrigerated case and on the far right were bottles of European wines and liqueurs. The smell from inside was definitely French cheese, which made me immediately long for Paris. I'd never felt homesickness for anywhere to the extent that I now felt it for my Latin Quarter neighborhood.
My senses were playing me a trick. Of a sudden, I could have been shopping on a summer's day back in Paris. Even the raised letters on the front edge of the concrete awning were telling me that 49-51 rue Paul Blanchy was where we were. But the dead giveaway followed the street address, and it was that one word, Saigon, which brought me back to reality.
"You okay?" Gerry's voice drifted into my senses from far away, as he took my arm. "Smells like home, doesn't it?"
I snapped into awareness of what he was saying. "That's right, you have cheese shops in Germany, too." Luckily, Linh had left us standing on the sidewalk, to do the shopping inside the store on his own. I was sure that the same rule applied here, like it did in Chinatown. If you can negotiate in the local language, it would be to your advantage, pricewise.
Speaking as if we'd met per chance on the sidewalk in front of the shop, Gerry and I chatted about how we would go back to Europe as soon as we got out of the Green Latrine, and how we'd first go to Paris, after all Yvette was going to teach him French. But since I would be learning German, we would eventually be able to go there. The eternal, light-hearted hope of the Saigonese was rubbing off.
***
Linh emerged from the shop with several wedges of cheese, wrapped in wax paper, a pot of Dijon mustard, and a bottle of Dubonnet in his crocheted shopping net. I looked at the wedges, mustard, and my favorite aperitif and then glanced at the display of meats in the window.
He clicked his tongue once to signal a negative response. His glance at Gerry indicated approval. "Allemand meat is much superieur."
Gerry snickered and I nodded in agreement. "You have no idea. But Moroccan isn't bad, either." My aside was aimed at Gerry, who laughed outright. And I told Linh in Chinese that he was certainly right. Since this was not even slightly humorous, he gave me a glare, which told me that he could smell bullshit.
Just two doors down Hai Bà Trung, we found the butcher shop of G. Brandt. This time, we all went in, since the shop was air-conditioned.
A rosy-cheeked lady, maybe in her mid fifties with a grey bun, contained in a hairnet on the back of her head, protruding somewhat from under her starched, white cotton hat, greeted Linh from behind the refrigerated display counter with a cordial smile of recognition and slightly accentuated French. "Has the embassy reopened, Monsieur Linh?"
"No, no. These are my new employers. Messrs. Loughery and Helmstedter." He motions us individually.
Her English was very good. "Oh, Americans?"
"Non, madame, je suis français." I decided for full disclosure.
"Und ich bin deutscher." Now, that got her attention. Apparently, despite the abundant presence of VWs on Saigon's streets, Germans didn't happen in every day of the week. And that was probably the reason that our pork chops were particularly thick.
***
We were, once again, walking alongside the beaux-arts building, which looked like the smaller version of that certain museum in Paris, and upon which Robert Moses couldn't lay his destructive hands, when I asked Linh what it was. "The Municipal Theater, the Opera or the National Assembly, depending upon whom you ask and how old and of which ethnicity that individual happens to be."
"And what do you call it?" I wondered and explained things to Gerry.
Linh smiled slyly. "L'assemblée théâtrale de la nation." he said in French, so Gerry would get the cognates, and the, albeit rather weak, joke. Then he switched back to Cantonese, so, as he explained, the nosey Vietnamese officials couldn't eavesdrop. "There is more high drama in this National Assembly than in all the Parisian theaters together." I explained to Gerry in a whisper what he'd said, and why he'd said it in Chinese.
Gerry chuckled politely. "So, could you ask him," He looked around and lowered his voice. "what the difference is between Hai Bà Trung and rue Paul Blanchy?"
Linh didn't need a translation. "Paul Blanchy: first bourgmestre of Saïgon. Hai Bà Trung: two dinky dow, insurgent sisters. But same street, different times." And upon hearing the word, insurgent, the policeman, dressed in white, with a black belt, shoulder strap and epaulettes, standing in front of the Caravelle Hotel at the corner of Tu-Do Street, gave us an uncomfortably inquisitive look.
And when I tried to explain. "A bourgmestre is--"
"Yeah, a mayor." Gerry told me, smiling and winking at Linh. "It's about the same in German." For the first time, I felt slightly jealous. Well, more precisely, I felt left out and just a little useless.
***
When we turned onto Tu-Do Street, the cop was still watching us, and even followed us casually a ways along Tu-Do. But fortunately he stopped and turned back, when we changed sides of the street.
Next to a spectacularly elegant French tailor's boutique, we followed Linh into the Pharmacie de France, which was spelled out in tall and skinny neon letters above the two windows and door of the narrow store front. A white glass sign with the Bayer cross in a circle was suspended on a steel pipe from the concrete awning with a white sign displaying 'dược phẩm' in black lettering below the circle with the cross. And Linh verified that 'dược phẩm', indeed meant pharmaceuticals in Vietnamese.
Since it was expected of me to do the wheeling and dealing here, due to the fact that neither Linh nor Gerry had ever heard of neither potassium permanganate nor permanganate de potassium. To be quite honest, neither had I until Gordon and Ju-Long had mentioned it in connection with diluting it in water for disinfecting salads and vegetables to be eaten raw. And Gerry and I needed another bottle of glycerin, known in French as glycerol, for us to use in the enema bottle to clean out our asses.
The pharmacist, a young woman, maybe four years my senior was quite flirtatious, joking with Linh and me that we wouldn't need any malaria prophylactic in Saigon, only if we were to venture the relatively short distance down to the Mekong Delta. She'd spotted the bottle of Dubonnet and laughed that the contents of the bottle, combined with gin was all the prophylaxis we needed.
We were getting along just fine, while she went to get the potassium permanganate, finally making a sale. But when I asked for a bottle of glycerin, she flipped.
"Oh, monsieur, you must realize that I cannot sell you potassium permanganate and glycerin together." She looked at Gerry, Linh and myself as if we'd just started chanting: 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!'
"And why not?" I asked meekly, since we were being seriously chastised by her glare.
At that, her glare transformed from disapproval to pity. Her face told us that we should have paid better attention in school, particularly in chemistry class. "Because potassium permanganate combined with glycerol will cause a severe flash fire at temperatures above 21°C."
I burst out laughing at the mental image of shoving a cucumber, soaked in potassium permanganate up my freshly rinsed ass. That would be one injury, which would be hard to explain, even in a war zone.